


truth or consequence

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The person who gets Wally to put the suit on again is unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	truth or consequence

**Author's Note:**

> _  
>  **Coda to "Complications."**   
>  _

It’s three in the morning in Palo Alto. There are stars, nothing like the fogged-out blankness of the coastal Happy Harbor. Conner watches them glitter above him as he waits at the front door of apartment #3. 

He had knocked twice, but his strength had made it incredibly audible, though he’d taken great care not to splinter the wood. A light goes on inside and his super-hearing detects someone breathing in deeply on the other side, and he knows that breath, knows that self-bracing. There’s a bark. His can’t help but smile. 

A lock slides out of place and the door opens, slowly but fully. 

"Wow," Conner says before he can stop himself. "You look terrible." 

Wally frowns at him as though offended. Maybe Conner had exaggerated a little – he’s got a bit of a stubble, and his pajama pants are askew, and there are bags under his eyes, and a slump to his shoulders, but that’s mostly it. 

"You couldn’t’ve said – I dunno, awesome?" Wally suggests in exasperation. "C’mon in, dude." 

Conner lopes in when Wally steps aside to accommodate him, and the slight stiffness in Wally’s back does not escape him. The dog, Brucely, is shuffling around Wally’s feet, his brown eyes inquiring but admiring as he blinks up at Conner. 

"Hey, boy." Conner waves at him as Wally closes the door. 

Wally pads past him, heading for the kitchen table, and Conner follows him without a word. 

"D’you want some leftover pizza or something?" Wally asks him. Conner shrugs and Wally nods before opening the fridge. "It’s kinda cold and like – working the oven is always a crapshoot when Artemis isn’t here; she’s a lot better with the pyrotechnics." 

"Cold’s fine," Conner says. After a moment, Wally has dropped a plate on the table in front of him, so he takes a seat, and Wally pulls out the chair crosswise. 

Conner glances up at him again. He looks exhausted. Conner supposes that he would be, too. 

"You were up?" he asks. Wally sighs and scratches the back of his head.

"Yeah, studying," he says, his mouth quirking a bit bitterly. "Helps take my mind off things. And stuff." 

"You know what would really take your mind off things?" Conner suggests bluntly. "Putting your suit back on." 

Wally’s eyes flash sharply in his direction, his hand frozen at the back of his neck. “Please don’t tell me Nightwing sent you here to guilt me into rejoining the team.”

"Why haven’t you?" Conner demands. "We need extra hands now more than ever. Especially with Artemis—"

He closes his mouth, not sure if he should tell Wally that he knows Artemis is alive yet. Wally winces, and the pain in his eyes is a shade too genuine, as though Artemis really  _is_  gone, so Conner continues, hoping to purge it. 

"—in danger," he finishes, and Wally’s eyes go wide and he sits up straighter but Conner does not pause. "And Kaldur now – catatonic."

Wally blanches. “What?” 

Conner scrubs a hand over his face, the pizza forgotten. “Nightwing told me everything. And – I told  _him_ everything. M’gann, she… she thought Kaldur really killed Artemis. She lost it. She – she tore his mind to pieces, and now he’s probably in a coma.” 

"Oh jeez," Wally says hoarsely, the circles under his eyes making him suddenly look so much more sleepless and crazed. "So Artemis is—"

"Going to be fine; I promise," Conner tells him, making a vow he knows he can’t uphold. "She always is. It’s like her secret superpower or something, always being fine." 

Wally’s mouth twitches and his eyelids go low. “Yeah.” 

"Wally," Conner mutters, even himself bewildered by his tact and gentleness as he addresses his old friend, the boy who’d taken him home from the ruins of the cave where he’d first opened his eyes, the boy who’d promised him the moon and held it above him, the one whose closet had reminded him of his Cadmus pod, the one he’d gone to when he broke up with M’gann and the one who’d hugged him, tightly, unrelentingly, until he stopped wanting to tear the world apart. 

Wally looks up at him, so much older now, so much of the shine gone from his eyes and so many freckles faded. 

"We need you," he tells him. "Whatever it is that’s keeping you back – shake it off. You’re better than that. You’re better than  _this_. Nightwing needs you, Artemis needs you, Kaldur needs you. We could be at war by tomorrow.”

"I’m not a soldier," Wally interjects fiercely, and Conner shakes his head.

"You’re our friend," he says. "And that’s who we need right now. After you and Artemis left it was like – it was like all the glue keeping us together was just gone. Artemis was okay, because she got to keep you, and you’re the glue. You keep us  _us_.”

He takes a deep breath and says two words he has never uttered to Wally in the whole five years they’ve known each other.

"Please, Wally." 

Wally stares at the table, blinking every few seconds, his shoulders slack. If his eyes weren’t open, Conner would think that he’d fallen asleep. Brucely lets out a snore from the couch. 

"Eat your pizza," Wally finally says, standing.

Conner watches him leave the kitchen, slipping into the bedroom, and does as he’s told. He picks all of the olives off and takes in the pizza, bite by bite, as slowly as he can. 

When Wally emerges again, there are red goggles on his forehead, as polished and shined as they had been years ago, when they’d been the only thing between him and the winds of the world. 

Conner’s face splits into a smile. 

"I’m sorry," Wally mutters, his hands lingering on the scarlet lenses. 

"For what?" Conner asks. 

Wally inhales and exhales and it lifts his whole torso up again, just straight enough to hold the red lightning bolt again.

"For taking this long," he says.

Conner stands up from his chair and puts one hand on Wally’s shoulder. Wally turns his head to look at him questioningly, paler than Conner remembers, thinner, like he hasn’t been eating twelve hamburgers per meal.

"It’s okay," Conner tells him.  

**Author's Note:**

> This is fairly old, but I still kind of like it. Grimace.


End file.
